The Neighborhood Podcast
This is a podcast of Guilford Park Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, North Carolina featuring guests from both inside the church and the surrounding community. Hosted by Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing, Head of Staff.
The Neighborhood Podcast
"Celebrating the 1700th Anniversary of the Nicene Creed" (October 12, 2024 Sunday School)
Presenter: Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing
What if the best way to understand God the Father isn’t an argument, but a song you can’t forget? We gather around a hymnal and let music do what treatises rarely can: hold storm and stillness in the same breath, pair rock with cloud, and honor a God who is both immortal and invisible yet somehow beside us every hour. Along the way, we correct a common historical mix-up about Arius, trace the politics and pressures surrounding Nicaea, and explore why the Creed says so much about the Son and the Spirit but so little about the Father.
We move through a gallery of living metaphors—sculptor of mountains, nuisance to Pharaoh, host of every table, womb of creation—and watch the room light up as different images give different people a way in. The Navy hymn brings the sea’s danger into view; “Immortal, Invisible” names the mystery that stretched the early church; “God of Great and Small” softens the tone to show how transcendence leans close. Creation hymns turn windows into cathedrals. “All that borrows life from thee is ever in thy care” reframes breath as a gift on loan. And when faith feels thin, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” steadies a grieving congregation, reminding us that God holds when we cannot.
This conversation is a gentle challenge to narrow language and a warm invitation to a wider vocabulary for God the Creator. If the word “Father” has been hard, these hymns offer new doors: light from light, fortress and fountain, guide by day and fire by night. We hold the creed in one hand and a melody in the other, discovering that doctrine can sing and that songs can teach doctrine. Listen, hum along, and tell us which image of God feels most true to you today. If this episode moved you, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review to help others find the conversation.
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Alright, well good morning everybody. How are we doing today? Everybody enjoying the fall weather that's finally showed up? Yes. Did everybody's football team win yesterday? Alright, you're right.
SPEAKER_01:Um do I George won't want to go.
SPEAKER_02:My TV loves the team. As soon as the pastor says the benediction, you can go back to me the germ stuff.
unknown:My dad will install there, too. Yeah, he's my trick for the picture.
SPEAKER_02:Maggie, did you go to Auburn? Pardon me. Are you in Auburn in Auburn Grad?
SPEAKER_03:No, uh Ronan. Auburn says they were playing baseball.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yes? Okay, good, got a good thing. Yeah. All right, well, good morning, everybody. Um what uh what are we grateful for today? Let's just I'd just love to begin sessions like this with a with a gratitude check. So who would like to share what's what's one thing that you're grateful for today? Can be as big as the love of Jesus, it can be as small as the really great cup of Starbucks you had this morning. Doesn't matter. So what are we grateful for today?
SPEAKER_09:Being here.
SPEAKER_02:Being here, all right. What else are we grateful for? Jeff. I love how happy that all that makes sense. Yeah? Oh gosh. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_03:AT had a great company this weekend, and it's just so fun to see so many people enjoy after their school. I'm grateful we had that and greens for happening.
SPEAKER_02:Although ironically, uh some of the AT homecomesties happened in Winston-Salem. And the only reason I know that, the only reason I know that is because I did a wedding at the Marriott, uh, the Marriott in downtown Winston-Salem, and the entire uh like AT football team was spending the night there for some reason. I was like, I guess you're right, it's just too much. Yeah, so I was like, what are you all doing? So they couldn't put them right here. So good. What what else are we are we grateful for today?
SPEAKER_01:Grateful for my retired uh, what else were you gonna do?
SPEAKER_00:Yesterday, uh my wife had an operation on her hand, and uh the doctor prayed for for his success, and she prayed with it, and I thought that was a wonderful thing. What did what did she have condition in the hand or something? Is she still in the hospital or is she not in the hospital? No, she's falling, so it was an adaptation. Wonderful to have a doctor that is a crucial guy in his hand.
SPEAKER_02:I too am grateful for the fall weather. Uh this uh I I I am in hardcore soup, stew, and chili mode. It's like once once once the daily high dips below 70, I'm like, alright, I gotta concentrate. It's time for chili, so I'm grateful for that. So all right, well, so uh want to do a quick recap of what we talked about last week, and then um what we're gonna do is we're gonna sing some hymns together that talk about our theology of God the Father or the first person of the Trinity. And part of the reason for that is that um if you're really wanting to have a robust conversation of the first person of the Trinity vis-a-vis the Nicene Creed, there's not a whole lot to talk about, is there? Um if you if you notice on the Nicene Creed, this chunk here is God the Son, this chunk here is God the Spirit, and these part up here is God the Father. Uh we talked about this a bit last week. Why is God the Father not given a whole lot of air time in the Nicene Creed? They all agreed on it. Yeah, exactly. I mean that's that's that's the long and short. Because who God the Father was really wasn't up for debate. It was God the Son and God the Spirit that everybody was arguing over. So whenever you see a creed um like this, like the Apostles' Creed or any other statement of our faith that gives a really small portion of attention to a person of the Trinity, it basically means that that portion of the Trinity is not really up for debate. And while uh I I also wanted to remind uh myself and you all that Dylan fact checked me last week, and I wanted to share that with you all because uh I I had one of those details wrong. And this is gonna happen when we've got a young man here who's in seminary who's gonna keep me on my toes, which is good. Thank you. Thank you, Dylan. So I stand corrected. Um Arius, remember, Arius was the the gentleman who got all this started, was not actually a bishop. Um remember he was the one, this is kind of goes into our recap from last week, he really struggled with the idea that uh that Jesus Christ was fully, both fully God and fully human. He really couldn't, really struggled to hold those two things together. And so he was uh promoting the idea that Jesus Christ was divine, but not quite to the same status as God the Father. And that was really what prompted this whole conversation because remember, we talked about how at this time in the roughly the fourth century uh Christianity was not yet the official religion of the Roman Empire, but the Roman Empire had decided to basically stop persecuting Christianity. They hadn't yet adopted it, but they decided it's okay to practice it. So when that happened, all of these debates about theology that had been happening in people's homes, because remember, that's where worship happens when Christianity was persona non grata, were now all of a sudden in the Roman Empire kind of public debates. And that's why this all came to the surface. And Constantine, who was the uh who was the emperor, wanted to unite the Roman Empire, and that was really what prompted the Council of Nicaea because he wanted, he didn't really care about the theological nuances of Trinitarian theology, but he did want a politically unified empire. So he got all the bishops together not in Constantinople, but in Nicaea, which is to the southeast of Constantinople. And I said last week that Arius was a bishop at that council. He in fact was not. Dylan, keep going. What who was Arius and who was he not?
SPEAKER_05:Arius was, I believe, the presbyter. Akin to like our elders in the church. But he was not a bishop. There was a separate bishop that he had to say for because all the bishops had their scribes or something on the line. He was in the main.
SPEAKER_02:So um, so yeah, so uh so I want us to have a little bit of sympathy for Arius, because like I said last week, for two reasons. One, I do believe that all we owe the heretics among us, and maybe there's some in this room, I certainly have my own heretical beliefs, uh, that we owe a great debt of gratitude for, because it's the heretics that force us, the church, to say what we believe, right? Because what we believe really really matters. Um and also imagine being in the minority, and then not the minority of a particular conversation, and then not even being able to be in the room where that discussion is being had. I mean, I think it is fair to say that the the deck was definitely not stacked in his favor. Um so yeah, we talked about that last week, how the the council in ICEA actually happened really in two different stages. Remember, the creed that we uh professed today in church was not actually finalized in 325, which was when the original council was, but when there was a second council in Constantinople, which is now modern-day white in 381. Okay, so that's the the uh reader's digest version of what we uh talked about last week. So for the next three weeks, we're going to spend one week each with a person of the Trinity, and there's not a whole lot to talk about with God the Father in the Nice and Creed. So I thought um I would ask Jordan to uh we're gonna test his sight reading skills. Sorry, Jordan. We're just gonna sing a couple hymns that are towards the beginning of our purple hymnal. And I simply want us just to spend about 20, 25 minutes singing some of these hymns together and just talking about what they say about God the Father or God the Creator. So last week we sang holy, holy, holy. So this week, Jordan, let's do um hymn number five. So everybody, if you've got a hymnal in front of you, go to hymn number five. What is hymn number five? God is called Drown the Mountain. So this is not a super familiar um text, but this is one of my favorites that happens to be written by a someone who is my current mentor in all things hymn writing. His name is John Thornbird, and he's a retired Methodist pastor in um in Dallas, Texas. And we actually sang this um a few weeks ago or a few months ago. So I'd like for us to to to sing at least the first three verses together. So, Jordan, would you mind playing through it once so we can hear it?
SPEAKER_06:Sure, we have a lot of things.
SPEAKER_02:Everybody say thank you, Jordan. So, um, yeah, so uh John Thornburg wrote this about 30 years ago, a little bit more in 1993. I'm just kind of curious. Go back through and read the different metaphors that you see in that hymn. And I would love, if we have any volunteers among us, just to share a particular metaphor that we just sang that is standing out to you today. What's your favorite metaphor of the ones that we just sang? I can tell you my favorite. My favorite is God, the nuisance of the Pharaoh. That is just, I really love that kind of tongue-in-cheek uh, you know, just the idea that God, God the Father, God the Creator was is kind of a thorn in the side of the oppressors. I really love that metaphor. Um I had I I was blessed to have lunch with John when I was up in Detroit at the Hymn Society conference a few months ago, and I was we were chuckling together over it. He said he had a really fun time with that line.
SPEAKER_11:So that's like the man, the hammer.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, the nuisance of the pharaoh. I love it. What what else?
SPEAKER_09:What other what other I think the third host with the divine and the queen that he's the host of every table. That's a God the host of every table, yeah. Of what we grow the goats on the table.
SPEAKER_02:And that gives a lot, that gives voice to a lot of metaphoric imagery in the Old Testament of the vineyard, right? You find that all over the prophets, especially in Isaiah, the idea that God is the great the great uh the great vine dresser. So, yeah, that's definitely a lot of that verb in the Old Testament. What else?
SPEAKER_00:The beacon of the free.
SPEAKER_02:The beacon of the free. Why why does that stand out to you today, George?
SPEAKER_00:Well, everybody needs something to guide their way. So go to that beacon.
SPEAKER_02:Any other metaphor that stands out to you all? I love the uh bloom of all creation. I think that's really important because we uh the the classic Trinitarian language is of course Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but um we really do, I think, God a disservice when we limit our definition of the Trinity to that formula. Is it important? Absolutely. Did I use that a few weeks ago when I baptized Landon Bryant? Absolutely. But the womb of all creation is a much more feminine imagery, which we have biblical precedent for that in Isaiah and elsewhere. So, yeah. Thank you, y'all. Any others? Alright, let's sing number eight. Trust that most of us know this. We're gonna sing, um let's see. Let's just sing the first verse of this. And I don't I don't think Jordan needs to play through it since I think we know this one. So just give us a little intro there, Jordan.
unknown:Here we go.
SPEAKER_02:And we're gonna do number eleven next. All right, eternal father strong to save. So what what what uh what does this hymn say about God the Father? Or what or what what uh images or memories does this bring up for you all? Do we have anybody in the Navy here? I was gonna say this is known as the Navy hymn. Yeah, this this is often known as as the Navy, the Navy hymn uh for uh for obvious reasons for for those in peril on the sea.
SPEAKER_11:So every time I go to the Naval Academy, this is we can go into the chapel. Yes, you're allowed to be able to do that. Yes, absolutely.
SPEAKER_08:This is what we say at all. Yeah, not for the night.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, always are also what they say in the movie Titanic, and they go to church, and it's it's a high obsessed with that in high school.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, for us for us millennials, for us millennials who our first big cinematic memory was Titanic. Yes, we all remember that.
SPEAKER_09:I love that.
SPEAKER_02:I um I the first congregation that I served, as many of y'all know, was on a small island with no bridges. Um I had a lot of sailors, a lot of people in my congregation that had boats, that spent a lot of time on boats, um, and uh we we would we would sing this hymn several times a year uh for that for that reason. There's a lot of people in that congregation that knew about the majesty and the danger of being out on the open water. So again, framing God the Father, God the Creator as uh as the author of all creation, but also our greatest help in times of uh of Harold, as the as the Him would say.
SPEAKER_09:My grandmother was supposed to come over on the time. Really? Yes. I mean she was ready to and her sister was ill and it went left.
SPEAKER_02:So here I am. Here you are! Wow!
unknown:Wow. That's right.
SPEAKER_02:Any other thoughts or uh anecdotes about this happen before we turn our turn to run next time?
SPEAKER_10:Sometimes it's hard to sing all the way through it, but you really read more something if you're trying to sing it if you got someone that said Yeah, and imagine imagine singing this song if you know somebody who is who has been lost at sea.
SPEAKER_02:Or I mean I'm trying to think of the people who sang this after Pearl Harbor or something. You know, I could imagine churches singing this after that day back in 19, what was it, 40, 41? Yeah, absolutely. All right, let's do, what did I say, Jordan? 11. Uh let's do 11. Um this is a really another um uh a hymn that leans on a lot of metaphors. Um this is written by another great contemporary hymn writer, um, Tom Troger, um, who used to be the pastor at a church that was uh very very near and dear to my heart, Central Presbyterian Church in downtown Atlanta. So let's sing uh Source and Sovereign Rock and Cloud. All right. What a hymn. There are a couple hymns that whenever I sing and I go, man, I'm really pissed off that I didn't write that myself. This is this is one of those hymns. Man, that's really well done. So uh go through, look through, and pick out one metaphor that really stands out to you, that speaks to your understanding of God the Creator or God the Father. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I really like the storm and stillness, breath and dove. Which verse is authority.
SPEAKER_02:Storm and stillness, breath and dove. Thunder, tempest, whirlwind, fire. Yeah. Yeah, I love it. Great job of hymn writers to hold, whenever we're talking about God, to hold two things in seeming conflict with each other, storm and stillness, and be able to hold them together and say God is okay. That's really the work of faith to hold things that might be in conflict with one another and to hold them together. So thank you, Chad. Absolutely. What else?
SPEAKER_09:He does the same thing like rock and cloud. Rock and cloud, yes.
SPEAKER_02:What uh stories in the Old Testament might rock and cloud uh remind us of? Can anybody think of a story in Exodus, maybe? Uh that yeah, Abraham. What else? Moses uh striking the rock. Yeah, Moses striking the rock to to create, to give what? Water, right? And what about a cloud?
unknown:The cloud of God.
SPEAKER_02:Remember as they were wandering around, God led them with a cloud during the day, right? And what at night? Yeah. So that's brilliant work of hem writers to like force us to remember, oh, that's right, God did this, God did that.
SPEAKER_09:What else? Fortress Mountain kind of has the same thing to make fortress being solid. Yeah. And a fountain.
SPEAKER_02:So God is both the same and sturdy and strong, but also on the move, right? So both predictable and unpredictable, right? What else? Any other particular metaphor that we'll gravitate to as well.
SPEAKER_05:Continuing on verse one, the second line. Life who's life all life.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's a lovely line, isn't it? Life who's life all life and house. And any other verse of, I mean, a typical rule of thumb is don't use a word over and over and over again. Uh anyhow. But it works really well there, doesn't it? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Especially the rocking bow. And then servant lamb. Those churches would really uh go to those kinds of metaphors. And this makes me miss those little churches.
SPEAKER_02:I think it loves it. All right, let's do first verse of the next hymn, Immortal, Invisible, God only wise. Let's just do the first verse here. But y'all stay on twelve for a second here. Um, so I trust we all know that hymn. Uh what does this first verse that we sang say about God? He's always there. Always there. Immortal, invisible, God only wise. The reason I chose this hymn to be one of the ones that we sang this morning is I think that this is the heart of what Arius really struggled with. How to fit Jesus Christ as an earthy human like us into the equation of a God that is immortal, invisible, God only wise. Arius just couldn't really wrap his head around that. And I I want, again, I want us to give some sympathy to him because in his defense, that's a hard thing to wrap your head around, you know? Like, I mean, it really, it really is. So I kind of want us to uh uh to acknowledge what the teachings of the church have been over millennia, but I also don't want us to take for granted what you and I have just kind of. Received as doctrine that at the time was like, how do we do that? So that is, I think, one of the reasons that we sang the other two hymns that had the metaphors, like um rock and cloud or storm and stillness, is the work of the church in in writing these creeds, such as the Nicene Creed, is okay, how do we as a people of faith hold two things in creative tension with one another? Arius, for whatever reason, could not hold those two things in tension with one another. And that's uh that's what the church eventually decided to do. Because one plus one plus one equals what? One. Try to make it sense. Um, but again, there is something something to be said for uh it is a mystery that we all kind of God is less an equation to be explained as is a mystery to be shared in held in wonder. All right, nineteen. Uh wait, did I say that right? I think yes. Yeah, let's do uh nineteen. Nice, pretty simple melody here by Natalie Sleet. Go ahead, Jordan. All right. What does this hymn say about God the Father, God the Creator? What stands out to you to you? I also noticed there's there's some uh seeming uh dissonance, like we talked about, with rock and clouds, storm and silence. We have that with God of silence and God of sound. So you're seeing now multiple hymn writers trying to do that. What else stands out to you in this hymn that we just sang? What does it say? What claim is this making about God?
SPEAKER_01:God is a God over everything, right?
SPEAKER_05:God of the one, God of all the times. It's easy to forget it. Yes, God over everything, but God over us. Yes.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, absolutely. So, yeah, so turn our turn your attention to verse two that uh Dylan's talking about. God of land and sky and sea, God of life and destiny, God of never-ending power, yet beside me every hour. So, no, it's just real, it just kind of sneaks that into the hymn. And you're right, Dylan, that makes a very important claim about God, that yes, God is immortal, invisible, God only wise, but is also God of me and you, right? So, again, holding the enormity of God with the personal relationship that we have with God. I also really like um I like that the hymn that we sang before this was 12, because both of those tunes have very different feels to them, right? Immortal, invisible, God only wise. I mean, that's just a it's a very bum, bum, bum, bum, very strong. I don't I don't want to use the word masculine, but just a very, you know, assertive, thank you. That's better. It's very assertive tune. Um, but but this tune by Natalie Sleet that we just sang is much more, you know, God of great and God of small. It's just a very, very, much more tender tune to it. I like, I like that, I like the diversity of that feeling of the music, that God is both strong and assertive, but also tender and caring and nurturing to. I think that's one of the things that we lose when we only refer to the first person of the Trinity as Father, right? I'm not saying we get rid of that language. Y'all hear me use that language in worship all the time, but one of the reasons I love singing these hymns is it reminds us that we don't have to constrain ourselves to that one image of God, which I think is really important, because a lot of us have had and have great relationships with our fathers, our biological fathers. Some of us not so much. So you have to ask yourself if somebody had a really hurtful relationship with their biological father, or maybe was abused by their father, and they come to church and the only way they hear of God is father, you kind of need to ask yourself, well, what is that, what harm might that do? Um so I think that's why it's important that we really use a diverse language to speak of God. Yeah, okay. I'll have to I'll have to mention that to Bill. I'll have to say that.
SPEAKER_10:You know, you know, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Natalie's uh Natalie Sleet is a fairly popular contemporary uh composer of Christian music. I think she's since died. I don't I don't know, but um but if you don't recognize this hymn, March, I guarantee you that our choirs have sung stuff by Natalie Sleeve before.
SPEAKER_10:Um Natalie's really great. I'll never just say that.
SPEAKER_02:All right, let's turn to thirty-two. I sing the mighty power of God.
SPEAKER_09:Which number?
SPEAKER_02:Uh thirty-two. Let's do um let's do verses one and three. Next, okay? All right, I sing the mighty power of God. What stands out to you in the verses that we just sang?
SPEAKER_04:I think a lot of people can see God through nature and creation, and so this really points to his presence and his role in the world.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I I I actually thought about this hymn when Trisha, the girls, and I spent Labor Day weekend in Black Mountain, just being in the mountain with how I thought about it. The god makes the mountains rise, right? So yeah, this speaks to the beauty of nature and how that reminds us of the magnificence of God. Yeah, absolutely. What else?
SPEAKER_11:I just coming back from the retreat because the house we remain, we could look out the windows and just see the beautiful mountains.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it also reminds me of um, oh yeah, I'm opening on this, I'm trying to remember which psalm it is. I want to say it's 121, but I left my eyes to the hills is also a beautiful notation in one of the psalms. Multiple psalms. What else? All the borrows like everything that is every care. This idea that we borrow life from God. That is a profound theological statement. We don't make life, we don't create life. Everything that we have is borrowed from God. Um it's similar to uh uh God who's giving knows no ending from your religion and less for we sang a few weeks ago in one of the uh lines in the I think the last verse, it calls God gracious donor of our days. It's that same kind of idea of this life that we are given that we are given is borrowed from God. Thank you, Del. So this was I I may have mentioned this before in a sermon, but um, this is the first hymn that Hazel Grace and Windsor Fearing ever heard. Um this was the hymn that I sang to both of them as I held them in my arms for the first time. Um I don't know why. I I had a hymnal with me in the hospital, because I'm weird. But I had a hymnal with me in June of 2020 when um when Hazel Grace was born, early on in COVID. At the time I wasn't even sure if I was gonna be able to be in the delivery room, um but but but I was, and it was the first time that I was ever alone with Hazel Grace because we had gone from the delivery room into the um what do you call it, the maternity ward, and uh the nurses had given us some time, and Trisha looked at me and was like, I have to take a shower, please. And so Trisha went to go take a shower, and I was holding Hazel Grace by myself for the first time. And I had a hymnal in front of me, I just opened up to a random hymn, and this was the first hymn that opened up. So the first hymn that I ever sang to Hazel Grace was, I sing the mighty power of God. Um so I also was thinking about as I was holding my daughter for the first time by myself and singing, Well, all that borrows life from thee is ever in thy care. I was thinking, here's a little piece of life that I borrowed from God. Um that uh so I'm in charge of it. And I'm in charge of it, and I don't know what the heck I'm doing. And for that reason, that was the Holy Spirit. Um I brought a hymnal when Winnie was born almost two years later, and that was all I also sang that hymn to Winnie as I was holding her for the first time. So that's part of why this hymn will always have a special place in my heart. Sure. All right, two more hymns and then we're done. Let's do 37. 37, let all things now living. And let's just sing the first verse of this one. Here we go, first one. My guess is you probably sung this in the month of November. Um, because this is this is often sung at Thanksgiving services. Um, I listen. Uh anything else hand out to you on this uh A Pillar of Fire Shining Forth in the Night. That's this isn't the first hymn we've sang we've sung in the last 30 minutes that's made that reference to Exodus, of God of God the Creator leading the Israelites through through the uh through the wilderness. Anything else that stands out to y'all on this before we sing our final hymn? By the way, Jordan, our final one's gonna be uh 39. Great as I think.
SPEAKER_05:Light into light.
SPEAKER_02:Light into light. That sounds a lot like the nice thing green. God, eternal God, uh things all seen and unseen kind of sounds like that. Why why does that uh any particular reason that resonates with you?
SPEAKER_05:We talk about all of the data cycles. So it's interesting to see something that's saying from like the light was there.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. That's all. All right, um, let's have our final hymn is let's sing verse one of Great Is Thy Faithfulness, which is thirty-nine. Let's put the page over uh thirty-nine.
SPEAKER_06:Verse one.
SPEAKER_02:Great is thy what I like to call bread and butter hymns, that many of us, upon singing, have some memory of a of an important time when we have sung this song, the this song. And I'll share with you all in closing one of my favorite memories, but I'm curious, does this song evoke any memories for us? I think of Billy Graham. Billy Graham! Why is that?
SPEAKER_09:I don't know. I think this was just always a song at this rally.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, like I said, bread and butter hymn. This is like I said, most people on their deathbed, if you ask them to tell you what their five favorite sermons they've heard in their life uh might struggle, I will probably struggle, and I'm a preacher. But you ask people of a special hymn, and this is gonna be high on that list for a lot of us. Anyone else?
SPEAKER_01:I grew up Presbyterian, so this song resonates with me because this is the song I think we most often say. Yeah.
SPEAKER_10:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:This is definitely one of those hymns that has very broad appeal across a variety of Christian contexts, right? Yeah. And I think for for me, as it pertains to God the Father or God the Creator, um, this is a song that I think means the most to most of us in times when we are feeling broken or sad. I for many of us probably remember singing this at funerals. Um in closing, I'll share with you all uh the most memorable time that I ever remember singing this hymn. Um, and then we'll we'll close with prayer because I know we're a few minutes past the hour. Um I uh did some supply preaching at a small church in um right outside of uh Rome, Georgia. If y'all know where Barrie College is. I know y'all have a grandkid that went to Barrie. So I I served a church uh called Silver Creek Presbyterian Church, which is right outside of Rome, Georgia. And um I had uh I had preached for them for a for on and off for a while for a while, and then that church went through a very painful split, unfortunately. It was back in 2012, and uh the pastor and all of the session and about half the congregation uh just left and decided to start their own their own church over a theological issue. Um and so there was this remnant of the church that it happened pretty suddenly. So this remnant of the church woke up one day and they had no pastor, they had no session, and half of their friends and family were gone. And I was uh I was on staff at my presbytery summer camp at the time. I was a counselor, and the presbytery asked uh uh if we, the all the counselors on staff, if we would help leave worship for that first Sunday after the split. Um so uh on we threw a worship together service together at the last minute, and even the organist and the pianist left. So I was the pianist for that Sunday, um, and I'm not a great pianist. But this was one of the hymns that I could play, so I was like, okay, I guess we're gonna sing Praise Thy Faithfulness. And I remember singing that Sunday, um, this song, Praise Thy Faithfulness, with the church that was just grieving. Families were torn in half, and and they were just, it was a Sunday where we everybody was we were affirming that we were broken and that we had really failed to be the unified church of Christ that God calls us to be. And I remember singing this hymn with the people who were just feeling broken, and just in that moment of feeling that sort of brokenness in relationships that we all know what that feels like to one extent or another to say we may not be feeling particularly faithful in this moment, but God is faithful even when we're not and when we fall short of that mark. Um so that to me is, I know it's a bit bittersweet. I don't mean to end this on a downer of a note. Uh that church, by the way, is doing fine uh to this day. I can't happily report. I have a I have a drawing of that church building in my office to this day. Um they're doing just they're doing just fine. Um I just will always recall the singing of that song as a reminder to myself that I'm not called a perfection. There are times that I fall short of the mark, just as we all do, and that we can nevertheless proclaim that God is faithful even on this. Real quick, any prayer requests before we close today in prayer? Prayers for Anthony's son-in-law who's having a procedure or chat. For a job search. Anybody else? All right, let's pray. Gracious God, sculptor of the mountains, nuisance of the Pharaoh, dresser of the vineyard, we give you thanks for the many ways that we can speak of your wonder and your majesty. We pray that you would be with us as we continue to delve into the mystery of the Trinity and pray that you would be with us as we go about our week. We we pray a special blessing upon Anthony's, um, Anthony's son-in-law, who is having a procedure this week. We pray for Chad uh as he searches for a new job that he may find, uh, find the right job that you have laid out for him. So we pray for Chad and his family. We pray for all those among us who need uh your healing in mind, body, or in spirit. Keep us courageous, keep us faithful, and keep us grateful as we go about our week. This we pray in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray, saying, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debts, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thy kingdom, the power and the glory forever. Amen. Alright, so next two weeks we're gonna get a little bit more into the weeds about the theological nuances of the Nicene Creed. So if you haven't read the book already, I strongly encourage you all to do that in the next week. Because next week we're gonna talk a little bit more about what it means to be forgotten but not made and all those, all those things. So have a great week, everybody.